Amazing: Amazon Alexa Makes It Easy To Say “Sorry”

Jun 16, 2016 08:16 AM EDT By Alma Christian, UniversityHerald Reporter

NEW YORK, NY – MAY 10: Vice President of Echo, Alexa, and Appstore at Amazon.com Mike George speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on May 10, 2016 in New York City.
(Photo : Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

For humans, sometimes saying sorry is a challenge to do. But for Amazon’s Alexa, this could be a brilliant breakthrough.

Timeliness on the virtual assistant’s breakthrough skill is considered essential, as told by an Echo project source.  The technology is slated to analyze a user’s responses and detect his/her’s current emotional state. Within a span of two years, Amazon’s AI has already reached a more advanced state with its latest skill, the Daily Mail reported. 

Users of Amazon’s Echo speaker have taken to Alexa’s expanded skill set, from managing simple voice-related tasks such as setting playlists to ordering food online, as well as offering fashion advice appropriate for any weather scenario. As the technology achieves near-perfection, the AI is also tasked to respond accordingly by analyzing its users’ emotions.

The Echo project source also mentioned that Amazon researchers have continuously tweaked the AI’s varied uses, in order to stay ahead of its competitors. And what better way to do it by means of Alexa being able to express empathy over any mistakes made.

By picking up on different emotional clues, the human affect would be recognized by the AI and a reflective response can be made, the MIT Technology Review reported. Although Amazon’s greatest competitors, Apple and Google, have already released their own optional AI versions – the Echo speaker (which houses Alexa) is the one of firsts to have a user’s voice as its main interface.

With Amazon’s efforts to provide better and more advanced features in its products, the company’s improvements to the Echo virtual assistant’s understanding when communicating with its users offer a more sensitive way in assisting the device to respond accurately to ambiguous requests.

Talla CEO Rob May also agrees. With better detection of emotional states and language parsing, virtual assistants could offer more meaningful conversations with its users. “If I was in Apple’s shoes, I would find a way to give people the ability to train Siri,” added May.

 

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